


doing just fine

by sandpapersnowman



Series: Janey Springs' Emporium o' Fics [8]
Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Comfort No Hurt, Developing Relationship, Established Relationship, Getting Together, Handsome Jack mentioned, Kissing, M/M, Medical Trauma, Morning Kisses, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Praise Kink, implied - Freeform, like. the hurt is past and the fic is just the comfort part, mentioned lmao
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:47:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25395601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sandpapersnowman/pseuds/sandpapersnowman
Summary: Tim is quiet, and traumatized, and jumpy, but more than that, he’s asurvivor. Zane can’t imagine what he’s been through, but he can imagine he’d have lost his shit around the time someone named ‘Pretty Boy’ began offering a ransom for him dead. Zane wants Tim to see the brave man he sees, even if healsosometimes wants the attitude tangled into Tim to cut his clothes off with a knife and make a mess of him.Tim laughs into the back of his shoulder, and it isTim’slaugh.“You think I’m your boyfriend?” Tim asks, warm and genuinely curious.
Relationships: Zane Flynt/Timothy Lawrence
Series: Janey Springs' Emporium o' Fics [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1004580
Comments: 1
Kudos: 41





	doing just fine

**Author's Note:**

> digs this out of my borderlands folder too. apparently it's zane/tim night!
> 
> warning for a brief, graphic tannis description of uhh how the bomb in tims face worked lol
> 
> title from phoenix's [Long Distance Call](https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/phoenix/longdistancecall.html)

“What’s up, cupcake?” Tim had asked once, sleeping in and then finding Zane already up in the cozy apartment they’ve been sharing, then winced. “Sorry. The… You know.”

Zane _does_ , unfortunately, know. Timothy Lawrence seems like a sweet guy — falls for women easily, trusts too much, too soft for a place like the borderlands. But those little moments of _Jack_ , the pet names and aggression and the _sneers_? Those weigh on him.

“It’s all good,” Zane said brightly. “You call them like you see them,” he’d joked.

Tim laughs at that, a weak, atrophied thing that surprises them both.

Tim is quiet, and traumatized, and jumpy, but more than that, he’s a _survivor_. Zane can’t imagine what he’s been through, but he can imagine he’d have lost his shit around the time someone named ‘Pretty Boy’ began offering a ransom for him dead. Zane wants Tim to see the brave man he sees, even if he _also_ sometimes wants the attitude tangled into Tim to cut his clothes off with a knife and make a mess of him.

Zane knows that makes him a bad person. He’d rather take the thought to the grave than fuck up whatever good, _very_ good thing is going on between them.

He’s lost in his thoughts when Tim wraps himself around his waist from behind.

“Morning, kitten,” Tim croons against his neck, then freezes.

Zane nearly drops his coffee.

“Mornin’,” Zane laughs.

“ _Sorry_ ,” he groans.

“I don’t mind,” Zane shrugs, much as he can with Tim on him, and reaches for another mug to fill. “Really.”

Tim goes suddenly, deathly quiet.

“You ‘don’t mind’,” he repeats.

Oh no.

“I don’t,” Zane also repeats, faking confidence. “You’re allowed to call your boyfriend pet names,” he jokes. “If we’re boyfriends, I mean,” he adds, realizing they’ve never really... Put a label on this. Shit. “Or if not, that’s fine, you can say cute things to the man you sleep with.”

Tim laughs into the back of his shoulder, and it is _Tim’s_ laugh.

“You think I’m your boyfriend?” Tim asks, warm and genuinely curious.

“I... Don’t think you’re _not_ my boyfriend?” Zane tries. “We’re doing boyfriend things, aren’t we?”

“Mm,” Tim kisses under his ear. “What are ‘boyfriend things’?”

Zane tilts his head to let Tim keep going. He’s touchy, starved of it after seven years hiding alone in space, and Zane never discourages it.

“Mm,” Zane hums back, like he has to think about it. “Kissing me good morning,” he says. “Holding my hand when we go out. Going out to dinner together, and always sitting next to me so you can keep your knee against mine under the table.”

Tim hums like this is all very interesting information.

“And pet names?” Tim prods.

Shit. Zane forgot that’s why Tim’s kissing him into rambling in the first place.

“And pet names,” Zane confirms. “Even if they’re not part of your usual lexicon, and they’re more like a... A twitch you don’t like.” Tim had described it as that, once — just a muscle jumping against his will, outside of his control.

“Do you like them?” Tim asks, loosening his grip so he can get Zane turned around in his arms.

“I don’t not like them,” Zane hums.

Tim’s mouth moves to his throat.

“Can I hold onto you?” Zane asks, feeling his own fingers twitch when Tim bites.

There’s an affirmative noise against his skin, and Zane cups Tim’s waist just as Tim kisses him for _real_ , soft and slow.

Tim tastes like toothpaste, and his mouth tastes like coffee, and it’s... Not a great taste, actually, but Tim winces his tongue away and keeps it chaste so they can keep kissing for a few minutes anyway.

“You don’t have to like them,” Tim finally says, breaking away for air.

“You don’t have to _dis_ like them,” Zane points out. “It’s okay. I know you’re not him.”

“I’m not. I’m _not_ him.”

“You aren’t him,” Zane repeats, brushing a kiss against Tim’s scarred cheekbone.

(Getting the mask off had been its own kind of trauma, too. Tannis spent a few hours poking at it with x-rays and ultrasounds figuring it out, with Zane and Amara there to make sure she didn’t try anything too risky. _Wired into the jaw, with det cord threaded along the spine_ was her verdict. Remove the jaw to operate the detonator out, replace the bone that it’s wired through, operate again after it’s healed to remove the rest of the det cord, if possible Easy.)

(Super easy. Getting Tim the anesthetic was a breeze when he’d already fainted.)

“I like you,” Zane admits. “I don’t like you for the parts of Jack that slip through, and I don’t dislike you for them, either. I like _you_.”

Tim sighs a wobbly breath and kisses him again to avoid saying anything.

(Yeah. Definitely boyfriends.)


End file.
